Various

“ You may sometimes take advantage of this feeling to let off a joke on a beater. Select a stout, plethoric one, and say to him, "Mind you keep your eye on the policeman, or he'll poach a rabbit before you can say knife." This simple inversion of probabilities and positions is quite certain to "go." A hesitating smile will first creep into the corners of the beater's eye. ”

“ I protest that if ever the sport of game-shooting is attacked, one powerful argument in its favour may be found in the fact that it produces such men as these, and fosters their staunch virtues. Think well of all this, my young friend, and do not vex the harassed keeper with idle and frivolous remarks. But you may permit yourself to say to him, during the day, "That's a nice dog of yours; works capitally." ”

“ Of the many varieties of keeper, I propose, at present, to consider only the average sort of keeper, who looks after a shooting, comprising partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits, in an English county. Now it is to be observed that your ordinary keeper is not a conversational animal. He has, as a rule, too much to do to waste time in unnecessary talk. To begin with, he has to control his staff, the men and boys who walk in line with you through the root-fields, or beat the coverts for pheasants. ”

“ Few of those who shoot realise what the keeper has gone through to provide the sport. Inclement nights spent in the open, untiring vigilance by day and by night, a constant and patient care of his birds during the worst seasons, short hours of sleep, and long hours of tramping, such is the keeper's life. And, after all, what a fine fellow is a good keeper. In what other race of men can you find in a higher degree the best and manliest qualities, unswerving fidelity, dauntless courage, unflinching endurance of hardship and fatigue, and an upright honesty of conduct and demeanour? ”

“ All these characteristics are the keeper's despair; though, to be sure, he has staunch lieutenants in his under-keepers; and towards the end of the day he can always count on two sympathising allies in the postman and the policeman. These two never fail to come out in the afternoon to join the beaters. It is amusing to watch the demeanour of the beaters in the policeman's presence. ”

“ If the beaters prove intractable, the birds go wrong, but the burden of the host's disappointment falls on the keeper's shoulders. His are all the petty worries, the little failures of the day. The keeper is, therefore, not given to conversation. ”

“ Lewis Waller) is slain, anyhow, all higgledy-piggledy, by the Jew, Issachar, whose seductive daughter Ruth (sweetly and gently represented by Miss Olga Brandon) this gay Lothario of a Prefect has contrived, not, apparently, with any great difficulty, to lead astray, or, to put it "classically," to seduce from the narrow path of such virtue as is common alike to Pagan, Jew, and Christian. As for handsome Hypatia herself, magnificent though Miss Julia Neilson be as a classic model for a painter, she is nowhere, dramatically, in the piece, when contrasted with the unhappy Jewish Family of two. ”

“ By the way, ecclesiastical ornaments must have been cheap in those days to warrant Bishop Cyril (strongly rendered by Mr. Fernandez) flaunting about the streets of Alexandria in such rainbow robes as, in a later age, would have led people to imagine that he had just broken out of the stained glass window of a Gothic Cathedral. ”

“ Mrs. T. I know he'll make some muddle—I'd better do it myself! (She rushes out into the passage.) Jane, is your Master gone? Call him back—there, I'll do it. (She calls after Mr. T.'s retreating form from the doorstep.) Montague! never mind about Blankley's. I'll see to it. Do you hear?
Mr. T.'s Voice (from the corner) . All right, my love, all right! I hear.
Mrs. T. I must go round before lunch. Jane, send Miss Seaton to me in the breakfast-room. (She goes back to her desk; presently Miss Marjory Seaton enters the room; she is young and extremely pretty, with an air of dejected endurance.) ”

“ I'm a goin' to hev my eye tight on 'im, so as 'e don't pocket no rabbits," to which you will reply, "That's right, George, you stick to it, and you'll be a policeman yourself some day," at which impossible anticipation there will be fresh explosions of mirth. So easily pleased is the rustic mind, so tenacious is the rustic memory.
But the head-keeper recks not of these things. All the anxiety of the day is his. If, for one reason or another, he fails to show as good a head of game as had been expected, he knows his master will be displeased. ”

“ The music to a Drama is generally a minor affair, but, in this instance, it is both major and minor, and has been specially written for the piece by Dr. Hubert Parry. As this play is not an "adaptation from the French," the music of this Composer is the only article de Parry about the piece, and, being strikingly appropriate, it proves an attraction of itself. It is conducted by the Wagnerian Armbruster, who, with his Merry Men, is hidden away under the stage, much as was the Ghost of Hamlet's father whom Hamlet irreverently styled "Old Truepenny." Altogether a notable piece. Prosit! ”

“ Thus shall your reputation as a humorist be established amongst the beating fraternity— ("that 'ere Muster Jackson, 'e do make a chap laugh, that 'e do," is the formula) —and if you revisit the same shooting next year, a beater is sure to take an opportunity of saying to you, with a grin on his face, "Policeman's a comin' out to-day, Sir ”

“ At least no experienced traveller ever yet made a stay in any country without becoming acquainted with plenty of people who were "uncommonly 'short' just at that moment,"—"that moment" being when the impecunious traveller wanted to obtain a slight loan. ”

“ Jest to show how the werry best, aye and the werry wisest on us, gets carried away by the site of swarms of appy children a enjoying thereselves, as praps they never did afore, I feels myself compelled to state, that our good kind Lord Mare was so delighted to see sich swarms of appy children all round him and looking up to him so appy and so grateful, that, jest afore it was time to go, he acshally told 'em a most wunderful story all about two great Giants as lived in the rain of King Lud, on Ludgate Hill. ”

“ Two thousand years hence the New Zealand dramatist may represent the Archbishop of Canterbury as walking about London in his lawn sleeves with coronation cope and mitre, or Cardinal Herbert Vaughan as wearing his scarlet hat and robes, and riding in a Hansom cab, having been unable to pick up his own Cardinal's train. All this were hypercriticism, but that the name of Alma Tadema, R.A., is a public guarantee for academical accuracy.
Anyhow, Hypatia, if not "a famous victory"—is at least a fine spectacle, with some fine acting in it, but this is mainly confined to Mr. ”

“ Ah! Surely the Maid is too lovely to leave to the murderous crew
Of the Monster Monopoly's myrmidons! Who'll bring a rescue or two?
Her First Appearance.
"What! a new Magazine!" just so,
First number, January, "Oh!
So far? yet farther sure will go
The Mother."
"School Attendance in Bad Weather."—"Sandford" writes of this to the Times. Why doesn't Merton—our Tommy Merton—speak? And what has the venerated Mr. Barlow got to say?
"The Situation in Europe."—Monte Carlo (i.e., for the winter months) .
ETHNOGRAPHICAL ALPHABET.
A is an Afghan, whose knife bids one quail ”

“ Stop, you are forgetting the menus.
[Miss Seaton collects the cards and goes out with compressed lips as Jane enters.
Jane. Another telegram, if you please, M'm, and Cook would like to speak to you about the pheasants.
[pg 35]
THE POET LAUREATE OF THE MUSIC HALLS. A STUDY. [See p. 33.
Mrs. T. Oh, dear me, Jane! I wish you wouldn't come and startle me with your [pg 36] horrid telegrams—there, give it to me. (Reading.) "Wife down, violent influenza. Must come without her, Toomer." (Resentfully.) Again! ”